Courtesy Michael Ramirez, Investor's Business Daily.

Thumbing through the 800-page, recently passed-in-the-middle-of-the-night American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the Stimulus package, I wanted to see if I could find some of those 9,000 earmarks it supposedly contained. (Don't worry--I didn't read the WHOLE thing, but again, neither did Congress) Lo and behold, there are quite a few articles of pork written into the law concerning our favorite game. Who would have thunk it? Now, even though our new president is a CFB fan, these earmarks could have been easily inserted by representatives from any big-time CFB state. Just a sampling for what I found.

BAILOUT: The ACC Championship Game. Law calls for the purchasing of 30,000 tickets for each of the next three games so they can quit showing those embarrassing empty seat shots. Will run for the next three years or until the game finds a permanent home some place other than Atlanta, or until two teams from the state of Florida finally meet in it--as it was originally intended, damn it! Special clause terminates the subsidy if any team from the conference gets a whiff of the BCS championship game ever again.

STIMULUS: National Coaching Change Buyout Pool. Wanting to dump your head coach but his agent secured too large a buyout clause? No problem, under this new federal agency. BCS teams can pay an under-market premium to insure that they can send their coach packing when they want AND spread the cost among other participants and taxpayers. Similar to flood and pension benefit insurance, the premium is artificially low and the pool under funded and virtually insolvent, but who cares when you're not picking up the tab? Some things are too important not to be made available. Sorry, like most everything else in CFB, not available for non-BCS teams.

STIMULUS: Purchase Snuggies for all fans of all teams nationwide.  See Alabama fans enjoying last year's spring game below:

$500 Million ought to do it, and if the government calls now, they can still get the free book light with the purchase of each Snuggie. The OMB believes that additionally, Snuggie technology can be combined with that of Sham-Wow, resulting in a super-absorbant blanket/robe that doubles as a raincoat that is also handy for soaking up spilled bourbon and cokes at games. Simply wring out and re-drink. Soon available in all school colors. Please observe all local ordinances about alcohol in stadiums.

BAILOUT: For a coaching staff for the Tennessee Volunteers. They can finally hire all the specialty coaches and recruiting dynamos they desire. Unfortunately, like CEO pay at bailed-out Fortune 500 companies, all assistant-coach salaries will be capped at $500,000, too. However, reward money from whistle-blowing on rival institutions will be considered exempt compensation.

STIMULUS: For a marketing firm to be hired by the Big 10(11). The purpose of which will be to rename the conference to something more mathematically factual, or in anticipation of adding an additional team. Possible names include:

• The Big 10--Now with 20% more teams for the same low price!
• The Big 11, Featuring Notre Dame on Lead Vocals
• The MID-Western Conference
• The Big Twelve. Look. We spelled it out. It's NOT the same.

Possible new names for the divisions: Rust and Snow, Manufacturing and Unemployed, Rose and Capital One.

BAILOUT: Funds for stadium expansion for all teams of the Mountain West. Will expand stadiums of all nine member institutions to an average of 75,000 seating capacity. Since you've only been around for ten years, fill every one of those current and new seats with an ass every Saturday during the season for the next two decades then give us a call about automatic inclusion in the BCS party. You're welcome.

STIMULUS: New Scoreboard for Bryant-Denny Stadium at the University of Alabama. $8M appropriated, the old one must be given back to it's previous owner, Auburn University, who it belonged to until this past fall. Evidently, the old one burned because of some faulty wiring done by EE students? Seriously, even the federal government had no idea there was an engineering school in Tuscaloosa. Maybe we can work another stimulus in the future if you guys want to vamp that up or something...

BAILOUT: For the Big12 South division, to reform their old conference. Can you say all your eggs in one basket? Really, whoever welded the old Big 8 and Southwestern conferences together didn't count on Nebraska tanking for long. Without them, there's no balance. Sure, Kansas and Missouri tease us for a season or two, but seriously, what's Oklahoma doing in the south anyway? Let's break these guys up like AT&T and let them roll in some of that WAC and Mountain WAC cream since it's obvious that the PAC 10 won't expand their way. Besides, to a Texan, the only good thing in Kansas City besides a championship game is the Bar-B-Que.

BAILOUT: To the Rose Bowl, and not just because Citi Bank is their main sponsor. That money was included in the bank bailout of last fall. The Rose Bowl didn't receive any of that money, but then again, seemingly didn't the banks either, because they're not loaning out a dime. Anyway, with the Rose locked into two conferences who refuse to modernize, the bowl might be circling another kind of bowl soon as they watch more talented teams reap bigger exposure in other bowls who don't discriminate quite as heavily. Lucky they still get the NC game every four years now or they might have needed an even bigger bailout. Like AIG bigger.

And finally: STIMULUS: To the Atlanta Sports Council, the fine folks who bring you the Chic-Fil-A Bowl and the SEC Championship game, more money to keep doing what they do--arranging top level talent from the SEC and ACC to meet in a pre-season kickoff bash not unlike the now defunct Kickoff and Pigskin Classics. Who says that bowl games have to be at the END of  a season? Here's to showing that if you build it, ESPN will come.

Well, that's about all of the CFB earmarks I could find in my limited time. I bet some of you could probably come up with some if you tried?